


The Return

by Whedgie



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:32:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedgie/pseuds/Whedgie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's return to John Watson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Return

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written a fanfic before for Sherlock, and haven't actually written fanfic in, oh, eons it seems, but was inspired by prompts from UghBenedict and Wolfflock's challenge. It's relatively brief, as I tried to keep it in theme somewhat, to both the prompt and what was shown in the 30 second trailer. 
> 
> Neat to get back into it. Hope you like it!

John wasn’t sure what he would have.

Fish or chicken? He obsessively read the descriptions, talking aloud to Mary as he sipped his wine, amused by the flowing descriptions.

“Really, what do you think? We’re having the red, and I know  hat fish doesn’t go, but I always love a good sole…” he smirked a little bit, at his wordplay, knowing Mary would too.

He glanced at her, smiling at him, and his breath held a moment at her look. Only one other person had ever made him feel that alive and it wasn’t _quite_ the same, and another lifetime ago, but it was still…

“John.”

Startled, he pulled himself out of his reverie. John Watson shook his head and looked back down at the menu, berating himself for the wool gathering that led him to once again imagine his friend’s voice in his head.

“John.”

Gripping the menu, John closed his eyes. This had to stop. He had lied to the therapist before he stopped seeing her, saying he never heard his voice anymore.

But then he realized the voice was clearer than he had ever imagined. And it sounded like there was a note of pleading in it. A mental shake again, soldier to the core, he straightened up in his chair and in his shoulders.

He opened his eyes to look at Mary, to see if she had noticed his slight journey away, but her eyes were wide, looking over his shoulder.

For the second time in his life, John Watson’s heart stopped beating, even though the rest of him stubbornly kept going on.

He didn’t want to turn around. Didn’t want to know for certain that he had either tipped into insanity or that he would be broken with the dream he never left behind completely.

Softer, now, but even more pleading.

“John.”

And he knew. The menu went down carefully, folded closed and placed on top of his plate, and clenching his fists just as slowly, he knew.

Taking a deep breath, John Watson stood up and turned around and came face to face with dead history.

“Sherlock.”

Mary, bless her, saw that this moment was wider than her and John’s future right now, and John heard her say from far away, “I’m just going to step outside for a bit of fresh air for a moment. Back in a few.”

John heard and felt rather than saw the shock and confusion in her voice, her too rapid pushing back from the chair as if she might fall, the worry mixed with panic in every movement as she escaped, knowing the man she loved would not want her to see this reunion’s inevitable pain.

He loved her so much in that moment.

Sherlock’s eyes barely spared a glance for her retreat, so focused was he on John, and he realized he was almost holding his breath. To see John now, so close, to be able to reach him and …

“Bastard. Fucking goddamned _bastard_.”

John’s words hit him harder than anything the past few years had done. More than the blade that had sliced across his ribs in Cairo. Hanging on to the rope bridge in Brazil. Tibet. The sleepless nights, the coded phone calls and messages when he could to his resources, more than all the running.

They slammed into Sherlock full of the fury and hissing and pain that he knew John had felt when he had died. Sherlock hadn’t known what it would do to John when he left…no, he _thought_ he had known, watching John at the graveyard, watching him for those first few weeks afterward, but when forced to leave Europe, believed that John’s strength would pull him through, and when Sherlock thought he’d be gone no more than six months, at most.

A year and a half later, seeing dried blood on his lower trouser pant leg that he forgot to clean off, and sipping cold tea in a room barely larger than a closet waiting to strangle someone he almost broke with the realization of how much he missed home, missed _John_. 

It was at that moment, Sherlock Holmes realized his mistake, and knew he might have already lost. He spent the next 18 months with an obsessiveness that frightened even him, if he had bothered to acknowledge it, the overriding desire to return home and to his friend sometimes leading to an uncharacteristic carelessness at times that he normally would have abhorred.

So he stood there, not sure if the words he had planned or the apology he had practiced or the manipulation he hoped might save him in the end would work.

Because part of him realized he didn’t deserve whatever grace John might decide to give him.

John’s next harsh words, spit out as if they pained him, brought him back abruptly:

“Mycroft must have known. Who else? Molly? Lestrade?” his voice barely containing his fury.

“Not Lestrade.”

He saw John’s eyes regard him a moment, saw the rapid pace of emotions flicker through his face and in his body. All of the pain and the thoughts John had after his death, of how Sherlock _must_ have survived – all his conspiracy theories and hopes that he chased down and insisted on, all the effort of trying to find Sherlock, convinced it was a lie, and then finally, finally, giving up after little more than a year, when Lestrade came to his flat and telling him in no uncertain terms John’s boozing and obsession with Sherlock still being alive needed to stop for _all_ of their sakes and John had spent the night sobbing after Lestrade had left.

The next day, John had started wearing the scarf.  And finally believed, _really_ believed, that Sherlock had died.

Sherlock planned to tell him later, much later, how proud he was of John for believing for so long. As well as how close he had come to the truth.

But now, _now_ , John was the angriest he had ever seen him, which Sherlock expected. In his head, Sherlock knew that John was going through a million rages, but knowing John, and he did, he knew the overriding questions surfacing:

Why didn’t Sherlock tell John he was faking? And why didn’t Sherlock take him?

Sherlock blinked rapidly. He wasn’t going to have much time. John’s reactions told him he probably had 5 seconds or less before John’s anger and relief simultaneously exploded and he’d either get punched or tackled. And Sherlock knew he only had the five seconds because they were in a public place, and John Watson’s british core demanded civility for that much longer.

“Morairty had snipers trained on you, Mrs. Hudson and Lestarde. To keep you all safe, you had to believe I was dead so I could find them and bring down the web he created and that would keep going even after his death.  Deep breath. “It had to be real, John, and…” here, Sherlock’s voice faltered slightly, though John, even after all this time, would have been the only one to catch it, “you would have made a terrible liar, and I would not risk your life that way.”

“So you let me believe you were dead. That you had fucking jumped off a roof and I had to bury you. That was better somehow than letting me know and taking me into your confidence with this grand plan of yours? Did you ever think of what that would _do_ to me?” John’s voice was deadly and still.

“Your feelings didn’t matter in that regard. I knew you could handle it. All that mattered was keeping you alive.” Sherlock’s tone held the arrogant hint John remembered, the assumption he knew what was best and John exploded. His hand slammed down, startling the people around them with such force the table rattled.

Sherlock tried to keep his face impassive as John looked at him, but Sherlock hoped some of the desperation he felt to have John _understand_ leaked into his expression.

“You FUCKING prick! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD, _I DIDN’T WANT TO BE ALIVE_! _I TRIED TO FOLLOW YOU!_ ”

John’s roar immediately silenced the restaurant. He looked around, frustration seeping from every pore, and pushed roughly past Sherlock, his only thought to find Mary, grab her, and go home. His embarrassment at his outburst, his recall of those darkest days, his realization that he was a damn fool all wrapped up to an instinctive desire to flee. His only tiny satisfaction was the look on Sherlock’s face at his outburst, the mixture of pain and hurt and surprise that he knew was reflected on his own.

Sherlock closed his eyes as he looked upward, his fists squeezed at his side, trying not to succumb to the fog that almost engulfed him. John had said he _didn’t_ want to live, that he tried to follow him.

Either John was better at concealing his own true intentions, or Mycroft’s therapist and spies were losing their touch. He suspected it was a bit of both, because never, in all his reports, did Sherlock ever hear of anything like that about John. He knew of the pain and the sorrow, of course, but never…

The knowledge that John could have …

Sherlock’s eyes flew open and he turned, seeing John’s form disappear through the front door. His long legs took him across the floor rapidly, his mind racing as the panic of John being _gone_ for good before he had even finished cleaning Moriarty’s mess rising up within him and realizing, again, how very very wrong he had been in so many things.  Something deep within him tore out and drove him to follow John in an increasing panic, wanting to explain, wanting to make John _know._

He saw Mary holding John’s arm, trying to reach him with soothing words, as John stood there, dazed, body heaving with exertion and more.

Mary glanced at him as he approached, eyes warning him of the stupidity he had already done and was about to do –

Sherlock skidded to a halt, so close to the two he could see the shape of the diamond within Mary’s engagement ring, and knew John had spent more on it than he should have, given the clarity of it. He pushed aside the small scar that left on him and instead saw the tremor in John’s hand, covering her other hand on his arm.

“John. I’m…sorry. But I had no choice.”

John’s hand stilled, and Sherlock, knowing what was coming, groaned inwardly but braced himself for the completely _wrong_ thing he had just said.

When John’s fist connected with his jaw for the second time in their lives, Sherlock stood there and let it happen, and felt a tiny flare of hope, knowing John had pulled his punch at the end so it wouldn’t hit with full force. But it was a last second decision, as John’s eyes caught Sherlock in the midst of the swing and something he saw there unconsciously made him do so, otherwise, Sherlock suspected John might have really been able to do serious damage.

As it was, Sherlock still saw stars. And still thought they were beautiful since it was contact from John, and proof both of them were alive and real.

John turned to walk away, the same moment Mary reaching out to him, her face worried and pleading for patience with the shock of it all.

Sherlock walked two steps and caught John’s arms, swinging the shorter man to face him. He grabbed each arm as it raised to hit him again, and struggled to contain John’s anger as well as his own, as John’s voice found him again and he looked Sherlock in the eye and screamed as he finally pulled away,

“There’s _always_ a fucking **choice** Sherlock! Do you think I wouldn’t have gone with you? That I would have been a liability? Who the fuck do you think you **ARE** with making a decision like that? A part of me died when you jumped off that building! Do you know how **hard** it’s been for me? For all of us?”  

John’s voice broke at the end, seeing what his words did to his friend – his friend, alive, so very alive and looking…lost. John stopped then, steeling himself for all the clever things Sherlock might say to justify his actions, to explain further, and he was winding up his breath to answer when he found himself brutally pulled into a hug, the breath knocked out of him.

By Sherlock.

John struggled against the touch, not wanting to know, not sure he could handle this much so soon. Seeing Sherlock. Alive. His brain was firing rapidly, trying to deal with the maelstrom it unleashed in him, but he couldn’t deny the joy he was feeling somewhere underneath it all, singing to him that Sherlock was _alive._

But he struggled, still, as gangly arms held him. And he knew he could break free if he just kept it up a bit longer, Sherlock’s resolve in holding him seeming to lessen a bit…

But then John felt --  **_felt_** all that Sherlock couldn’t – didn’t have the capacity to say. Long arms awkwardly holding him tight against his taller frame, John felt Sherlock almost hyperventilating against him, the choke in the man’s throat as he knew Sherlock was holding back tears, the anxiety, the tiredness in him.  Something Sherlock had never been in all the times John had known him. And the doctor in him, as always, made the diagnosis and it made his own heart clench.

Broken. 

John thought at what could have possibly caused that and what it implied and almost said aloud, “Oh god, Sherlock what have you _done_? You twit, you should have taken me with you.”

But instead, words barely made John’s ears.

“If you had truly gone John, I would have followed _you_.The work would have had no point. Nothing would have.”

Feeling his dead friend’s arms around him, John, always better at this as well, understood. His own arms went around Sherlock, and unafraid of his own, sobbed as he gripped the taller man tightly. He felt Sherlock’s own tears on his head and knew what his own confession to Sherlock might have done.

Mary watched them as the minute passed and as each man seemed to just exist in each other’s presence as they held tightly to each other. She saw how the man she loved solidly held his friend, and realized Sherlock held a part of John Watson that had never really left, would never be hers, and she knew that to keep John she would have to accept it.

John broke the grip first, releasing his arms and looking up into Sherlock’s face.

“No. Never an option. From either of us, from now on. If we’re to do this again, it’s together, once we’re ready. Understood?”

Sherlock stilled. John looked at him, seeing his friend’s eyes shift from the clouded pain that made him pull the punch. Something moving back into Sherlock’s expression that finally convinced John this wasn’t a dream or a mirage.

Then, a movement. A breath. A sigh. A slight smile.

At him.

In that moment, for the first time in three years, both men were home.

“Understood.”


End file.
